As You See It, Jan 22., 2013: Front page a bummer, dude

When I picked up my Sentinel this morning and saw the big headline. "This is my Dream." I thought, How wonderful! President Obama said a variation on Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" for his inauguration. Then I fully opened the paper to see it had to do with the surfing going on at Maverick's. Down toward the bottom of the page was a more subdued article on President Obama sworn in for his second term. And no article, whatsoever, to mark Martin Luther King Day.

I guess surfing is far more important than a president and a humanitarian as far as the Sentinel is concerned.

Bummer, dude.

Martha Dolciamore, Soquel

Fracking fears overblown

I write to allay any Fracking Fears, as described in Betsy Herbert's eponymous article. The supposition that the Monterey Shale will be conceded to hydraulic fracturing interests is well-founded. Santa Cruz and other counties will have to review the state's "discussion draft," and this will ignite a citizens comment process regarding chemical disclosure for groundwater in a region with a rich legacy of farming and grazing. Californians have a proven track record of contesting controversial energy development. The ban on new offshore drilling rigs after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, no new nuclear energy development since the closure of SMUD's Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant, and the environmental "civil war" heating up over the impacts of solar development on desert lands mean that the drilling rigs of Freedom Resources may find natural gas but that extra methane may be just more hot air for those in Aromas.

Jeffrey Jenkins, Santa Cruz

Epic journey? Hardly

I'm scratching my head over the Sentinel's front-page story Friday "Around the County," describing the planned "epic" 91 mile walk of two men to "raise awareness" about hunger. Setting aside for the moment that there is nothing particularly epic about a single day's walk or that that the issue of hunger in our community is relatively well-known and documented, there are many caring people and established charities already addressing this problem in a serious way. I don't mean to disparage the two gentlemen's good intentions; rather I nominate the Sentinel's breathless coverage for the paper's Misses category.

Dan Jett, Boulder Creek

No justice for Aaron Swartz

What kind of justice system is this? We see Aaron Swartz kill himself over his prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office for trying to make research documents from MIT (many paid by government funds) public domain. He did this by hacking into the server and downloading millions of documents. He was caught, gave back the hard drives and MIT did not file charges against him. In fact they made a lot of the documents public. The U.S. Attorney's Office said, "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer or a crowbar." Swartz was facing 13 felony charges and up to 35 years and he turned down a plea bargain of one felony charge and 6 months in jail. Evidently there was a lot of harassment coming from the Justice Department, like in the bail agreement Swartz could not solicit for defense funds and had a gag order on him.

All he wanted was to make the world a better place.

Dean Oja, Boulder Creek

Gun death statistics

A recent letter to the editor attempted to justify the possession of firearms by claiming that firearm-related deaths in the U.K., where most firearms are illegal, were the same as in the USA when adjusted for population size.

The facts are that, as of 2011, the number of firearm-related deaths per 100,000 of population in the USA was 10.2. The same statistic for the U.K. is 0.25, about 40 times less. When considering homicides only, the U.K. number is approximately 90 times less than the USA.

The simple fact is that guns kill people and the more guns are available, the more people die.